Aren’t they a gorgeous pair? Meet the beautiful Myla Barandog and the dashing Lance Shan, winners of Shutterfairy Photography’s first-ever styled engagement session giveaway (contest opened September last year; winners announced October)! I can’t remember exactly how many entries we got, only that there were quite a handful. I also can’t remember how my boss/mentor Malou Pages and I ended up picking this couple’s submission as the winning entry. What I do remember is that much of it had to do with the fact that theirs was the only entry that had been sent in by the fiancé (whereas everything else we got had been submitted by the fiancées)—I mean, how sweet is that, right, to have the guy participate in contests like this, when it’s usually the ladies who scramble to join in these sorts of things? To quote snippets from Lance’s e-mail entry: “My fiancée Myla has always loved [Shutterfairy Photography’s] style… She would always make me visit your Website… She already included you in our list of possible [vendors] for our upcoming wedding… Just a few days ago she learned about this contest, and she was very thrilled that she called me right away… I discouraged her from joining, and told her it would be impossible for us to win… But I want to surprise her, so I am writing this in the hopes of giving Myla her dream engagement session…” Who wouldn’t be floored after reading something like that? He even added: “She could be hardheaded at times, and so I’m expecting her to submit her own entry anytime soon.” Sure enough, we would receive an entry from Myla days later, but little did she know that her fiancé already beat her to it!

The Shutterfairy team flew to Davao (where Myla is based) to sit with the couple and discuss their desired concept/s and outcome/s. And they came to the meeting very prepared, it was as if they’d been planning this their whole lives! They showed us a few photos of couples clad in basic white-T-shirt-and-jeans combos (they liked the simplicity and cleanliness of this look), and of a room filled with balloons of all shapes and sizes. They also mentioned they liked the “vintage travel”-themed shoot that we did for one of our couples back in 2011 (especially the old trunks/suitcases). But the biggest thing that jumped at me about their mood boards was that they were chock-full of screencaps from the 2009 movie (500) Days of Summer. I asked why this was so, and Myla explained that they liked not just the “lightheartedness” of it all, but also how it looked timeless—i.e., you know it’s set in modern times because of how they talk, how they dress, the songs, etc., but there was something about the whole thing that lent an old-fashioned feel to the picture. I was quick to break it down for them, ‘cause it was exactly this element that made me fall in love with the film, too: the reason it worked was that there was a third character in play, and that was the architectural wonders of old L.A. , collectively—the Bradbury Building on Broadway (between W 3rd and W 4th, built in 1893), the Fine Arts Building on W 7th (between S Figueroa and S Flower, built in 1926), and the Eastern Columbia Building (built in 1930), to name a few. So I gave them an assignment: come up with a list of three or four of their favorite old (or old-looking) places, and that’s where we were going to be shooting!

I think it took them a little over a month to scout for places—they looked at a couple of places in Davao, and I think Lance did some research on a few historical spots in Cebu, too. Ultimately, they settled for Negros Oriental, not just because this was where Myla’s family has roots (in Dumaguete), but because it was home to three structures that she found to be very fascinating:

• An old bahay kubo-style fishing barn somewhere in Manjuyod (some 40 miles northwest of Dumaguete City), owned by the family of their wedding planner Grace Sycip-Romano (who herself had used the place as the site of her hacienda-themed wedding last year)
• The pretty Mojon Chapel in Bais City (some 29 miles northwest of Dumaguete, just before you get to Manjuyod), which some people erroneously cite as having Moorish architectural influence, but which actually borrows styles from Carpenter Gothic (no one can tell me when this structure was built, but my guess is it dates back to the early 1900s)
• The El Puerto Rico, a charming, privately-owned mansion that combines Baroque and Spanish Colonial (or hacienda) styles, located in Dumaguete’s El Pueblo Genovivo Subdivision (which the couple also booked for their wedding reception)

I’d only been to Dumaguete once (some two years ago, for the wedding of one of the first few couples I photographed), and I’d always known the place was rich with history, but I’d never imagined it would be this rich! After I got the e-mail from Myla containing pictures of the abovementioned locations, I wasted no time in asking her to book our plane tickets! From that moment on, I knew that this was going to be one of our best shoots this year!

Of course, at the same time, I knew that this was going to be one of the most challenging, as well, especially storyboard-wise: unlike most of our styled shoots, which are developed from a central idea, an overarching theme, this time we had to come up with a concept (or a string of concepts) based on our shooting locations. It’s hard when it’s a place/locale that serves as inspiration/starting point for a job, because then when you’re given a number of very disparate venues you’re not going to have it easy trying to piece the sequences together into something that makes sense! Thankfully I only had to look at the other variables in their initial mood boards and combine them with a number of inspirational elements already in my back pocket to help me build the scenes!

For the scenes that were to take place in the barn, I looked to the 1994 western movie 8 Seconds for some inspiration—except that, instead of having them don cowboy-inspired outfits (we’d already done that for another couple a few months back), I had them wear farmer-y clothes in denim and white, which was perfect because, as mentioned earlier, this very ensemble was a key feature in their mood boards. Myla’s outfit for this set was inspired by a photo of the actress Jessica Beil by Mario Testino in the February 2010 issue of Vogue, in which she wore oversize weathered denim overalls, and by a look in Ralph Lauren’s Spring 2010 Ready-to-Wear. I may have also been thinking of that one scene from the ninth episode of Season 4 of Sex and the City (“Sex and the Country”) where Carrie Bradshaw ends up in a puddle of mud in her boyfriend Aidan’s country retreat in Suffern, and you can see her struggling for her life in her denim overalls and dark olive green wellies. I loved that when we got to the barn we did not have to do a lot of cleaning—there were wood shavings scattered everywhere, but I decided against sweeping them into a corner because I liked how they added a rustic feel to the pictures. I also asked the couple to bring with them some farming tools—I wanted a couple of photos of them carrying a rake and a spade (we couldn’t find a pitchfork, you see), as a nod to famous 1930 Grant Wood painting American Gothic. I had to be careful not to make the whole thing look too masculine, of course, so I asked Jenny Hortillosa, who assisted me with the set decoration, to throw some horticultural elements into the mix, like an eggshell garden, and a bottle garden (complete with plant markers that bore love quotes/phrases with green thumb-y references, like, say, “Romance in bloom,” or “Secret garden”). (I would have loved for a couple of farm animals to be in the picture, too—couple of goats, or maybe even a couple of piglets—but then this was a fishing barn smack in the middle of a pond, so you can’t really expect goat husbandry or pig farming to take place in such a spot, right?)

As a rule, I (or we at Shutterfairy Photography) try not to reuse themes of shoots past, so when Myla said she really liked the aforementioned “vintage travel” theme that we did for one of our couples some two years back I had to discourage her from going down that route. But she insisted that, for the photos that were to be taken at the old chapel in Bais, she really wanted to make use of these postcard-pretty vintage-looking suitcases that she found in Dumaguete, so I asked to see them. Sure enough, when I laid my eyes on them—a pair of decorative wood-and-faux-leather suitcases with Parisian iconography scribbled all over them—I figured that they didn’t deserve to be punished just because I was unwilling to repeat concepts! I allowed her to use them, on the condition that she was not going to be wearing anything era-specific (the original “vintage travel”-themed shoot that we’d done had featured a kind of ‘60s look). We went for a look that, again, combined elements from Ralph Lauren Spring 2010 Ready-to-Wear: denim slip dress that called to mind blue work shirts, brown oxfords, and a grandmother-style long cableknit sweater cardigan in luscious lion brown (from Charlotte Russe).

For the photos that were going to be shot at the El Puerto Rico mansion, I wanted something a bit played down, just to offset the grandiosity of the place. I followed both Myla and Lance on Instagram, and that was how I found out they both loved to have coffee/tea together, and they both loved breakfast food (e.g., sweet breads), so I figured that a breakfast scene was in order. To set the mood I updated our boards with a 2002 Fabrizio Ferri photograph of the English musician Sting wearing a Tom Ford for Gucci kimono, lounging with his dogs at his Figline Valdarno, Tuscany, home. The kimono look was a little too fancy for my taste, though—I wanted something basic, modest, snug. So I asked the couple to show up in cotton pajamas in earth tones. The idea was for them to look like they’d just hopped out of bed, but not quite ready to slip out of that comfort zone just yet. It was kind of dark inside the El Puerto Rico, but I managed to find a solitary corner that was gorgeously lit, and that was where I set up our make-believe breakfast nook. I greatly enjoyed doing the set decoration for this scene. Mind you, nothing about that task was haphazard—everything was carefully laid out, from the placement of the croissants, to the slightly askew placement of the crochet table runner. I got so caught up in the set decoration part that I kind of overlooked the styling aspect (i.e., I forgot to pass on Myla’s grey-and-hot-pink polka dot socks—well, it didn’t come out too unseemly, so we’re fine)!

I gave them a bonus (fourth) set, just so Myla could have an excuse to wear a long dress. I was tempted to give her the “room full of balloons” that she’d been dreaming of, but had to nix the idea when I realized a lot of people had done that sort of thing already. So I proposed a sea of tealights instead of balloons. I was thinking of Julian Broad’s 2002 photograph of the Irish singer Enya in a room full of candles. I might have also been thinking of a similar scene from the music video of Mr. Big’s 1991 hit “Just Take My Heart.” Thankfully the couple was sold to the idea! It was an arduous task, trying to light over a hundred tealights—imagine the drops of sweat rolling down our foreheads—but it was so worth it in the end! The tealights lent an ethereal look to the pictures! Before we wrapped I asked for a few photos of them standing in front of El Puerto Rico’s main double doors—not so much because this structure reminded me of the door to curator Astrud Crisologo’s Casa Amarilla, but because I felt like the weathered wood and the cascading vines suited overall feel that the couple was gunning for.

Lance and Myla were such a delight to work with, not only because of their good looks (I swear, that line from a song that goes “that laugh that wrinkles your nose” might have been written for Myla) or their irresistible chemistry that made them very photographable, but mainly because of how they were very committed to turning this shoot into a memorable affair for the two of them (well, for all of us, actually). Always I tell my clients, “Don’t stress too much about this: it’s only your engagement photos, not your wedding day,” but this couple right here begged to differ, and approached the whole thing no differently than how they would approach the planning of the actual wedding! Their exchange of comments on Instagram and Facebook made it very clear that they took pleasure in every moment they spent deciding on each detail of the shoot. Myla, in particular, was quite hardcore: when I asked for the possibility of a sit-down meeting to discuss last-minute details, she wasted no time in booking plane tickets to Cebu, just like that! Also, I would credit Jennifer as the sole props master for this assignment, but that would be doing a great disservice to Myla, who sourced majority of the props that you see in these pictures (most of these items, including the mason jars and the mugs, she got from her favorite online store Paper Chic Studio). Lance actually mentioned in his first e-mail that these were just few of the qualities that he loved most about his fiancée: “She’s very full of ideas, and very creative—and she’s good at budgeting, too!”

They are set to tie the knot later this month (May 25), at the Our Mother of Perpetual Help Redemptorist Church in Dumaguete. The reception, of course, is going to be held at the El Puerto Rico. I’m sure the wedding photos are going to be as lovely as the engagement pictures, if not lovelier! It’s going be a magical day, I just know it! I can already picture Myla giggling endlessly. As for Lance…well, as he mentioned in the e-mail that he sent to us before we even met them, “Nothing makes me happier than seeing her happy.”

* * * * * * * * *

This engagement session was featured in the April 24, 2013, edition of Manila-based online bridal inspiration magazine BridalBook.ph, making it my second time to be featured last month (after the surfer-/beach culture-themed engagement session that I did in Siargao late last year was showcased in April 10), and my third time overall. I am truly honored and extremely humbled that  respected arbiters such as this Summit Media/Summit Digital title have taken notice of my (our) work, and so, to that end, I would like to take this opportunity to give massive, massive thanks to Kristy Ann Texon and the rest of the editorial team at BridalBook.ph—thank you so much, you guys, for your tireless support!

Lance Conrad Shan and Myla Belle Barandog | Photographed and styled by Angelo Kangleon for Shutterfairy in Bais City and Majuyod, Negros Oriental, on March 2, 2013, and in Dumaguete City on March 3, 2013 | Main photographer: Malou Pages for Shutterfairy | Hair and makeup by Edrico Chua Palencia | Set decorators: Angelo Kangleon and Jennifer Hortillosa | Special thanks to Paper Chic Studio and Grace Sycip-Romano of Creative Concepts

Couple of photos from the super fun personal style portrait session that I did for my friend Monique Rosal a few weeks ago. This wasn’t my first time to photograph this girl. I’d shot her some two years ago, at a time when I had had very little experience, and thus had had very little technical know-how (i.e., white balance and ISO settings and all that other good stuff had baffled me), not to mention I’d had to share the job with a bunch of other photographers and so I couldn’t exercise full creative control when it came to the locations, etc. Guess it goes without saying that the resulting photos from that shoot had turned out really bad—well, maybe not that bad, but definitely something I couldn’t be proud of—and so I’d promised her I’d take her pictures again. Which brought us to this session right here. I think it’s important to be ready to extend your subjects the courtesy of reshooting, especially when you yourself are not happy with your shots—you might argue that you’d rather wait for them to tell you they’re not satisfied with your work, but the truth is not a lot of people are going find it easy to do that, so, essentially, you’re just gonna have to be honest with yourself. Trust me, it’ll only do you good—so long, of course, as you stay sensitive to your shooting schedule and other appointments. Monique here had had to wait almost two years for an opening in my schedule, but that was alright, because what mattered was we got around to doing it!

This whole thing came at a perfect time, too, because she was starting to be obsessed with Tumblr, and she wanted to be able to post original photos and to keep the “reblogging” to a minimum. (I might also convince her to go on Lookbook.nu—Monique, remind me to send you an invite, OK?) The idea was to photograph her in her own clothes, or in clothes that reflected her personality, because we didn’t want to make the same mistake we’d made the last time wherein we’d made her raid her friends’—and even her mom’s—closets. My first impulse was to ask her to wear surfer chick-inspired clothes and then drag her off to a beach setting, if only to satisfy my own Tumblr obsession (the Billabong Girls USA Tumblr site is one of the very few sites that I follow), but then I realized that dictating her would defeat the purpose of a personal style shoot. Besides, she confessed that, although she did like the beach, she really was more of a rocker chick. For days we’d been talking about Coachella, the music festival held every spring in Southern California, how it had been a mutual dream of ours to attend it one day (and how I had been foolish for being in L.A. last year and turning down invites to weekend two), and that was how we arrived at an idea: why not have her show up at the shoot in clothes that she could see herself wearing to the desert music fest if she were given the chance to make that scene one day? I’m looking at these photos now and laughing at the fact that this “DIY Coachella” thing has since been given a name—“Couchella,” which is basically the act of “sitting on your couch and dreaming you were at Coachella”—but we had so much fun that afternoon! And I loved the clothes she was able to round up for the session, especially the vintage babydoll dress in eggshell lace—very Free People-y! Delighted me to no end, too, that she chose to wear everything with her brand spanking new 1490 10-eye Doc Martens—I always love it when there’s a little grunge or ‘90s involved.

Speaking of grunge/’90s, the Smashing Pumpkins T-shirts that you see her wearing here are actually mine (yes, I collect Smashing Pumpkins T-shirts, and I consider them a prized collection—some of these shirts I got when I first saw the band live at the Louisville Palace for the third leg of their summer 2008 tour). It was kind of spur-of-the-moment, really—in the middle of our shoot I remembered that she loved the Pumpkins to death (last year she and a couple of friends literally braved a storm by flying to Manila to see Billy et al. at the Araneta Coliseum despite the torrential rains and floods), and so I was quick to snatch a couple of T-shirts from my closet so I could take photos of her in them. Of course, as you can see here, they look a hundred times better on her than they do on me, but that doesn’t mean I’m letting her keep them!

She wanted me to take a few photos of the new tattoo between her shoulder blades (of three cassette tapes with their media spewed out to form a G-clef, a not-so-subtle declaration of her love for music), and that’s how things took a turn for the, um, boudoir. I’d never done a boudoir session before in my life—perhaps the closest I’d gotten to doing one was when I’d photographed Womb frontwoman Chai Fonacier’s naked back during their album cover shoot (also to pinpoint a back tattoo)—but, hey, anything’s worth trying, right? Thank God the girl was ready with really cute undergarments! I had to be real careful with my approach, though, by thinking less FHM and more Agent Provocateur catalog—this way I was assured the photos were gonna come out sassy, not sleazy. Sure enough, they turned out really nice, but I can only post a few on here—I’m sorry, but I still have a little bit of a gentleman in me, and that little bit of a gentleman is saying that everything else should be for her eyes only.

Now I’m torn ‘cause I can’t decide which is sexier: leaving something for the imagination, or having a healthy enough self-image to have no problem baring a little for the camera. When I’d first taken Monique’s photos two years ago, she’d seemed a little tense, if not squeamish, and it would show in her face, and in the way she’d moved (or not moved, for that matter), and that was actually one of the reasons why the resulting photos from that shoot had left much to be desired. This time, however, it was as if it was a totally different girl standing in front of me: calmer, more composed, and thus more radiant—still aware of her flaws, but was mature enough to just laugh about them. I asked her what had changed, and she shared that she’d been taking yoga classes for months now. It’s amazing what a renewed commitment to fitness can do to you—not just physically to your body, but to how you feel about yourself, as well. And nothing is more beautiful to photograph than someone who is clearly comfortable in their own skin.

Monique Rosal | Photographed by Angelo Kangleon in Cebu City, Cebu, on March 24, 2013 | Hair and makeup by Alex Nicole Lorenzana | Special thanks to Christine L. Abragan

Truth is, I’m not so much of a sucker for love stories in the broadest sense. OK, I know what you’re thinking: for someone who makes half a living photographing couples in love, that right there is kind of a harrowing thing to come clean about. But, believe it or not, I haven’t even seen, say, The Notebook from 2004—it’s, like, I don’t care if it involves a scruffy Ryan Gosling, and I don’t care if it’s chock-full of gorgeous 1940s fashion, because it’s just too sappy for my taste! Because of my line of work, though, and because of the wide diversity of clients that I am exposed to (thanks in part to my current part-time stint at Shutterfairy Photography), I am forced to embrace the “bigger picture,” for the sake of amassing an ecompassing collection of cultural references (although I still draw the line to some extent—last year I had to turn down clients who asked for a The Notebook-inspired engagement session). But if I were to have it my way, I would like to be inextricably bound to the kinds of love stories that truly fascinate me 100 percent. I’m talking about the ones that involve beach culture/summery elements (or Californian elements, an obsession that I talked about in a previous post), or those that are laced with adrenaline—or, very ideally now, those that pair these two. Having said that, it’s no surprise that, while I have not seen films like The Notebook, I have watched, say, Crazy/Beautiful from 2001 (starring Kirsten Dunst and Jay Hernandez) over fifty times, just ‘cause it’s set in sunny SoCal, and just ‘cause a good chunk of it features hold-on-to-your-seats freeway joyriding to punk metal/Latin-tinged hardcore hip-hop. It was this formula that got me started in the business of photographing couples in the first place: if you’ve been following my body of work, you will know that the very first engagement shoot I did, for an Ormoc-based couple, was built around this premise—well, the central theme was ‘90s/grunge, and the main inspiration was Mad Love from 1995, set in Seattle, but the jeep/joyride element was also inspired by Crazy/Beautiful.

It’s not a formula that appeals to most couples, and especially the women/brides-to-be, whose ideals almost always involve something sentimental, whimsical and mushy (again, we go back to that The Notebook-inspired engagement session that was dropped on my lap last year), and who cringe at the slightest hint of a “macho” element (it’s always a challenge to convince these brides-to-be that we need to insert a teeny-tiny bit of, say, basketball, just for the sake of putting their grooms-to-be at ease with the idea of a photo shoot), so, unfortunately for me, it’s not something that I get to do on a regular basis. Which was why when this couple right here commissioned me to do their engagement photos late last year, and they mentioned Siargao Island (not exactly California, but “the Hawaii of he Philippines,” and something I’d been dying to see for years), and that it was going to involve surfing, I got so excited I almost wet my pants! This came at a perfect time, too, ‘cause I was just reaching the peak of my obsession with anything that had to do with surfing—something that I’d picked up after spending one whole day in the summer of 2010 riding up and down that stretch of the PCH between Pacific Palisades and Malibu just taking pictures of surfers and surfboards, and that had amplified after photographing a surfer girl in Venice Beach one fine summer day last year (inspired by a photo that Boo George took of Australian pro surfer Stephanie Gilmore for the June 2012 issue of Vogue) , and after doing a surfing/longboarding-themed engagement shoot for a Singapore-based couple last July. From the moment these guys first called me, even before we could start any real planning, I just knew that this shoot was going to go down in my history as one of the highlights of my so-called career!

I had no idea how Lawrence and Estifanny had found me. I mean, I knew they’d known of me through my cousin Celestine, but how had they known I would be the right person for the job? When we first sat down I began to have a sneaking suspicion they’d seen the abovementioned grunge-themed love shoot I’d done in Ormoc some two years back, or the surfing/longboarding-themed one I’d done last July, because they pointed out it was the reckless, gritty, somewhat “masculine” feel that they wanted for their photos, nothing cheesy or cutesy. Or, could it be that they’d sensed that in me lied a frustrated adventure photographer desperately waiting for a big break? Regardless, I was just happy that they’d picked me when, frankly, they could’ve hired a more experienced photographer to do this for them.

At the time of our first meeting, Lawrence and Estifanny had been dating for a little over 7 years, but for more than half of that time they’d been living apart—him in Isabel, Leyte (some 40 minutes southwest of Ormoc), where he worked as a engineer, and her here in Cebu, because she couldn’t bear being away from her family just yet. Of the sea between them, they shared that at first it had posed as a challenge trying to figure out creative ways to be together, until one day they both had fallen in love with the stimulating and intoxicating sport that is surfing. Ever since then they would make it a point to go on a surfing trip at least four or five times a year, sometimes with the friends they’d made in the local surf world, but most of the time just by themselves. As they were telling me this story they made the whole setup sound like a compromise—I had to stop them and comment that having four or five summers a year and spending them in the some of the most breathtaking beaches/beach towns in the country with the person you loved was hardly what anyone would call a compromise! Their serious case of surf fever had taken them to Siargao Island a couple of times, and to Dulag, Leyte (some 25 miles south of Tacloban), Guiuan in Eastern Samar, and Calicoan Island (can’t remember if La Union was in their list, but if it wasn’t I’m pretty sure it’s going to be in their long list of next stops). It was exactly this aspect of their relationship that the couple wanted their engagement photos to shine a bright light on: the surfing trip that allowed them quality time together. They made it very clear, though, that, unlike the previous surfer-themed shoot that I’d done, they wanted theirs to look kosher, nothing staged or ersatz. The only way to achieve this, of course, was for them to go on a real surfing trip—their fourth for 2012—and for me to tag along! We first discussed Guiuan, because it was closest to where we were, and, between them and I, we knew a bunch of people there who could host us. But then Lawrence was quick to point out that, although the place was indeed closer, it was going to take hours and hours to get there by virtue of the fact that there were no flights to take us (a local airline had opened the service a couple of months back, but had to discontinue due to poor seat sales). He then offered that Siargao Island meant more to them, and was easily accesible by plane (Cebu Pacific, three times a week)—not to mention it was more “photogenic,” and not to mention the cultural significance of it being the country’s premier surfing destination. Of course, I was in no position to turn this offer down, especially since it had been more than a decade that I’d been itching to see Siargao!

So it was the quasi-documentary/guerilla approach that they wanted me to take—in other words, and perhaps more fittingly, since it’s surfing we’re talking about here, “go with the flow.” Sounds like a piece of cake, right? Well, not necessarily. Because although it was as easy as 1-2-3 following their trails as they made their way to their favorite spots, old and new, and chasing them around as they did their thing—even helping them lug their boards around wasn’t so bad—it was the work that took place before the actual shoot that didn’t exactly make the whole thing a “go with the flow” kind of deal. Wish I could say it was as effortless as just packing my bags and going, but the truth is, in the weeks leading to this shoot, I had to do massive amounts of research in order to come up with a solid mood board. For starters, I spent two whole Sundays scouring the used-books shops for back issues of Surfer Magazine. And for days on end I had to study the works of the great surf photographers like Jason Kenworthy, Morgan Maassen, and, my all-time personal favorite (it is my dream to meet him one day), Chris Burkard. I also had to do a considerable amount of reading on the legendary photographer John Callahan, who is credited for putting Siargao on the map via a feature in the March 1993 issue of Surfer Magazine (“Philippines: Beyond Perfection” was emblazoned on the cover). I also had the follow a bunch of surfer folk on Instagram, from the pros (Kalani Robb, Gabriel Medina, Kolohe Andino) down to the hobbyists (The Hills star Brody Jenner, Filipina actress Mylene Dizon, etc.), and for a time there all I ever looked at on Tumblr were posts by California-based singer/surfer Catherine Clark. I also looked to Right at Dawn for inspiration—in case you haven’t heard of it, it’s a “visualized novel,” or a novel told through words and images, by writer Ryan Patrick and photographer Keegan Gibbs, who are also surfers. On the styling front, I had to pore over the work that Melbourne-based fashion photographer Nirrimi Hakanson and Queensland-based stylist/blogger Mandy Shadforth (A.K.A. Oracle Fox) did for Billabong (their spring/summer 2012 campaign, in which the central feature was a European road trip). Most Saturday evenings would find me cooping myself up in my bedroom to watch surf films like the seminal The Endless Summer from the mid-‘60s, North Shore from 1987, Blue Crush from 2002, and Chasing Mavericks. Believe it or not, I even had to come up with a special playlist, just to set me in the mood: not purely surf rock—although I did have some Surfaris and The Beach Boys in there—but a list of songs that I would listen to if I were to go on my own summer adventure (most of these songs were borrowed from my California playlist): “Sweet Disposition” by The Temper Trap and “She’s Got You High” by Mumm-Ra (both from the [500] Days of Summer soundtrack), “Summertime” by Cody Simpson, “California” by Atherton, “Boy Meets Girl” by Evan Taubenfeld, “Beach Song” by Seryn, and “These Are the Nights” by Making April, among others. Goes without saying that music is a huge element in my creative process. Some of the best (to me, at least) images that I’ve produced are often results of when I had a song ringing in my head. The photos that you see here of Lawrence and Estifanny sitting in front of a bonfire, for example, were inspired by lines from “These Are the Nights” that go: “’Cause these are the nights that you know when you’re there/ You couldn’t have planned it much better, I swear/ And you hope that your senses aren’t failing you now/ And you think to yourself, Now, I could be wrong/ But I might have just stolen this scene from a song/ And you know that your sense aren’t failing you now…” Yes, I borrowed a scene from a song about borrowing a scene from a song!

Perhaps the most important lesson that I’ve learned from all this homework is that, if you want to effectively tell a story, you’ve got stick to a certain discipline—in this case, it’s the discipline of framing in a horizontal format. The thing about Burkard and Hakanson is that they rarely—almost never even—shoot in the vertical format. And the more I studied their images, the more I uncovered the rationale: images shot in the horizontal speak to you more because they look more natural—after all, to quote the great Annie Leibovitz, “the eyes see horizontally.” So for this shoot I made a conscious effort to never tilt or tip my camera to portrait orientation, and it felt so damn good! That’s not the only modus operandi that I espoused from the greats, though. As I was reading Surfing Brilliant Corners, the British surfer and travel writer Sam Bleakley’s 2010 book on “extreme global surf travel,” I picked up a tip from the part where he wrote about John Callahan and his technique: “his commitment to capturing cultural lifestyle, through place, artefact, [and] people, is supreme.” So I had to remind myself, too, to not focus on my subjects 100% of time, and to turn my camera to landscapes and objects around us every so often.

One thing I loved about this assigment—apart from how it educated me on technique—was that it brought me together with the talented young makeup artist/illustrator/photographer Alex Lorenzana. This really wasn’t the first time our works were going to come together—we’d become accidental collaborators some two years back when our photos of Sinulog street party scenes were used side-by-side for a special feature in StyleCebu.com—but this was the first time we’d met face-to-face. Being a self-confessed beach bum herself, no one else could’ve been more perfect for the job, and she knew what kind of make-up would look best for the photos we were trying to achieve. Her sick illustration skills came in handy, too (especially for the frames wherein I needed skin scribblings in Lawrence’s and Estifanny’s backs). Best part was when she also got to help out with the styling aspect by loaning Estiffany some of her favorite beach outfits!

I found it quite intriguing, the kind of chemistry that Lawrence and Estifanny had. I was doing individual portraits (i.e., pictures of them not together), and while he was energetic and self-confident in front of the camera, she was kind of camera shy. But then when I put them together in one frame, the mood sort of changes—he is still self-confident, but more benignly this time, while she somehow loses her inhibitions. And when I put them in the water or hand them their surfboards, the atmosphere changes some more—they’re more at ease, and there’s more swagger! It’s amazing for me to be able to witness these kinds of things—how two people affect each other, how their environment affects them—and study them closely, because they help me take pictures that are honest and uncontrived, and keep me from over-directing my subjects. Yes, so happy to finally be able to conduct a shoot in which I didn’t have to play dictator! Reciprocally, Lawrence and Estifanny pretty much left me alone to my business, and never did anything that would alter my point of view. Loved that they had so much insider knowledge of the island, too—we always found our way and we never got lost! You’d think that three days of shooting the same subjects would drive you batty, but that wasn’t the case here at all: apart from giving me some time off so I could explore the place on my own, they treated me as a friend, and not as a vendor/contractor, and I guess that’s why it all went so well—not to mention they were very bent on overfeeding me and Alex! Thank you so much for everything, Lawrence and Estifanny! I will forever be grateful for this opportunity!

Not sure if it’s appropriate to share this, but I must say that the feedback that I’ve gotten for these photos (I put up a sneak peek some two months ago) have been pretty overwhelming. I’ve been told by friends that this right here is truly my niche, and that I should be doing shoots like this more often! I’ve even received notes from strangers (from as far as England!) asking if I was based in Siargao and/or if I would be willing to take their photos should they plan to visit and have their own Siargao adventure one day! So crazy! Biggest pat on my back, though, came from the surfer and Surfista Travels Philippines owner Elaine Abonal (check out their amazing tour packages now!), who found me via Instagram, and who said she loved the silhouette shots and the “save the date” photos! This is all so amazing to me, especially since I never expected to get these kinds of responses. I mean, at the outset, all I cared about was making sure my clients were going to be happy with my work. For a moment I was even unsure about this whole thing—I mean, I don’t even own a telephoto zoom lens with a focal length decent enough for sports/action shots, and I don’t even have waterproof housing to enable me to get closer to the surfing action (thinking of buying one now, though)! But I assured Lawrence and Estifanny that, although I didn’t have an arsenal of sophisticated equipment to boast of, I’d done enough love shoots and I’d spent enough time soaking up beach/surf culture to be able to churn out the pictures they envisioned. That was what was important to me—to be able to take the pulse of them as a couple in love, against a backdrop of a sport they were absolutely passionate about, and a place/culture that made them one with the universe by spatially expanding their horizons. Whether or not the resulting photos would catch the eyes of others—and especially the surfing insiders—was really just an afterthought.

Lawrence Gochoco and Estifanny Sevilla | Photographed and styled by Angelo Kangleon in Siargao Island, Surigao del Norte, on November 23-26, 2012 | Hair and makeup by Alex Nicole Lorenzana | Special thanks to Hippie’s Surf Shop and the staff of Ocean 101 Beach Resort | Graphic tees and surf jams, Aframe Surf Company; lavender jacquard henley, Koto, Urban Outfitters